First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and Their Futures (Sissons Jeffrey)(Paperback)

It is widely assumed that indigenous cultures are under threat: they are rooted in landscapes that have undergone radical transformations, and the opposing forces of business corporations and ruling political powers only seem to grow stronger. Yet Jeff Sissons argues here in First Peoples that, far from collapsing in the face of global capitalism, indigenous cultures today are as diverse and alive as they ever were. First Peoples explores how, instead of being absorbed into a homogeneous modernity, indigenous cultures are actively shaping alternative futures for themselves and appropriating global resources for their own culturally specific needs. From the Inuit and Saami in the north to the Maori and Aboriginal Australians in the south to the American Indians in the west, Sissons shows that for indigenous peoples, culture is more than simply heritage-it is a